For certain types of wine, it is desirable that the wine should be stored in containers in contact with one side of each of a plurality of staves of French or American oak, the oak staves being in contact with the air on their other sides. The oak imparts certain flavour characteristics which are deemed to be most desirable.
Heretofore use has been made of oak casks made by traditional methods, being formed to a bulbous shape in the centre from a plurality of staves each of which has been individually shaped. After the casks have been used for some time their effectiveness in imparting flavour is substantially reduced, and frequently the timber is shaved on the inside of the casks to rejuvenate it.
This common practice is extremely wasteful of materials. Much scarce and expensive special oak is lost in being shaved. The shaving is a difficult and slow operation. Furthermore, sometimes casks are made with oak staves which have to be discarded because they are porous.
These difficulties have been recognised, and attempts have been made to reduce the cost by utilising stainless steel vats for containing the wine, in which are immersed oak chips. However, this is only partially successful, as apparently the oak requires to "breathe" when the wine is in contact with it, in order to successfuly transfer the flavour components to the wine.
The main object of this invention is to provide improvements whereby maximum usage will be made of available timber, whereby a wine container can be readily handled by mechanical handling means, and whereby the timber can freely breathe on the outer surface while it contains the wine on the inner surface.
The relationship of volume/area of timber in a cask is fixed, and the larger the volume of a cask, the less the ratio of surface area to volume becomes. It is another object of this invention to provide means whereby the dimensions may be altered to achieve any one of a range of volume/area ratios.